I think Tim Pool is beginning to get past the initial “hate speech is nonsense” reaction, and discovering the moral virtue of hatred. He is not the only one on the warpath against Patreon, of course, but he has become one of the most indignant, and his indignation does not come from prima facie reaction, but from in-depth understanding of what’s going on and who’s doing it.
Patreon really is a good service. It is, don’t get me wrong. It’s actually one of the best services for doing monthly subscriptions in this way. But they are twisted and evil people in my opinion. I don’t use ‘evil’ lightly. I wouldn’t have said ‘evil’ a week ago. I wouldn’t have said ‘evil’ five hours ago. But I read this and this says to me they are evil because this is PR jargon, lies, lies lies lies lies lies. And it’s funny because you can actually get the context of what Sargon said, they include it, and realize what Sargon was trying to do.
For those unaware, Patreon — the subscription-service — dumped Sargon of Akkad for uttering the following line:
I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n*****s, just so you know. You act like white n*****s. Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the Alt Right. I’m really, I’m just not in the mood to deal with this kind of disrespect.
In other words, Sargon was criticizing racists by comparing them to their own caricatures of disliked ethnic minorities, which does not necessarily accept the validity of those caricatures. If anything, it implicitly denies them. The statement given by Patreon completely misses this context, homing in instead on the word… unless, of course, they are criticizing Sargon’s negative generalization of the Alt-Right.
In this case, Sargon used racial slurs to insult others and specifically linked those slurs with negative generalizations of behavior, in contrast to how people of other races act.
Either they are unpardonably stupid, or they are lying in the most audacious manner.
What’s curious is that Jack Conte — the owner of Patreon — explicitly laid out that Patreon only censors people based upon “manifest observable behavior,” not speech (this was the reason they gave for deplatforming Lauren Southern, after her participation in a maritime migrant-ship deterrence operation in the Mediterranean). Sargon didn’t do anything.
But more incredibly, Sargon didn’t even say this on Patreon. It was on another channel, unconnected in any way from Patreon’s operations (certain videos are uploaded to Patreon feeds, while others are not; this particular video was not subsidized through Patreon, nor did it come through a Patreon-subscription feed). They are, by their own guidelines, outside their jurisdiction:
If you come across what you believe to be hate speech on Patreon, please take the time to report it.
Tim Pool is not exaggerating when he says that these people are evil. They are absolutist in their desire to control other people, and they will lie about it and smirk at you as they lie.
Imagine if your plumbing broke, so you called a plumber, but only plumbing service in your area refuses to fix your toilet because they researched your political views and decided they don’t like you. Imagine the power company operated in this fashion. Or banks. Or grocery stores.
Imagine if doctors operated in this fashion.
These people are evil, and it is a moral failure not to hate evil.
Jacob
18 Dec 2018Gotta be honest, reading that last part legitimately scared me. My first instinct was to point out that grocery stores or banks wouldn’t forego the profit motive for some weird Orwellian power game, but then again Patreon took a substantial revenue hit in deplatforming Sargon, and they just don’t seem to care. I hope Doctors would at least have some moral backbone, but then again the legal profession is riddled with this cancer despite supposedly being bound to high moral ideals such as justice. Can’t say it sounds implausible
C.B. Robertson
18 Dec 2018Not to scare you any more, but to a limited degree, this is already happening a little bit. Check out what MasterCard has been trying to do with gun sales. I’ve heard doctors on NPR taking a stand on guns too, contra injunctions to “stay in their lane.” It’s only a matter of time before other companies become moral police like Silicon Valley, if the principles are accepted.
Jacob
18 Dec 2018I don’t know if this is answered in your book (which I plan on reading once my schedule allows for it). It’s easy to feel disillusioned by this kind of nonsense, and I think my meta perspective on the whole culture war nonsense is following a similar trojectory to how you describe Tim Pools hateful red pilling.
My question is: Seeing as how your schtick is about hate (dont get me wrong, its a fresh perspective), how far do you take it? Looking back at history there are plenty of examples, and while the Nazis certainly filll the requirements for hate (and I hope it doesnt need to be said that I don’t think you are advocate starting the ovens). What should you do towards those you hate who hold power (as in silicon valley big brother technocrats like Conte)?
Tea
22 Dec 2018“Imagine if your plumbing broke, so you called a plumber, but only plumbing service in your area refuses to fix your toilet because they researched your political views and decided they don’t like you. Imagine the power company operated in this fashion. Or banks. Or grocery stores.”
I recommend reading “Archer’s goon” by Diana Wynne Jones. It contains this scenario, unfortunately illustrating our time only too well. The book is written as a fantasy for adolescents, but adults will appreciate its fine satire and its statement on a principled response to threats.
“All power corrupts, but we need electricity.”
C.B. Robertson
18 Dec 2018Well, no emotional relation is absolute in its goodness or badness — love, for instance, is not moral or good when it comes from a pedophile towards a child (Nabokov’s “Lolita” is a moral masterpiece because it makes this point). In the same way, hatred isn’t always good, but its rejection as ABSOLUTELY bad, in all cases (the common conception) is wrong. Neurologically, hatred is simply love + aggression. Philosophically, hatred is our reaction to a threat against something that we love. So the juxtaposition of love and hatred, as if they were opposed, is on its face a false distinction.
As an aside, I actually am not sure that its safe to say that the Nazis hated the Jews. Some certainly did (Hitler, namely), but the majority of the attempted genocide was much more mundane (“we were just following orders!”), a popular subject of interest in psychology (Zimbardo, Milgram, etc). But I am quite sure that Stalin did not hate the Ukrainian peasants. He simply didn’t care. In either case, evil seems to be more frequently the result of neglect than of outright hatred.
It’s not a matter of “how far” one takes it, but “where” one takes it. Given that hatred arises from love, the question of when it is appropriate to hate seems to be a question of what it is appropriate to love. Needless to say, it isn’t appropriate to love all things, and by the same token, to hate all things.
As for how to respond with hatred to those like Conte, hatred is a matter of disgust towards conscious intent (disgust is an analogy, but it’s fairly close). I don’t get near what disgusts me, as opposed to something I might dislike but tolerate. Because I hate Conte and his kind, I stay away from them, and won’t support them. No positive action is necessarily warranted in this case, to manifest moral hatred (there’s also a kind of symmetry to this, since their expression of control is selective deplatforming).